Artist of the Day, October 25, 2025 : Edward Allington, a British sculptor (#2401)

Edward Thomas Allington (1951 – 2017) was a British artist and sculptor, best known for his part in the 1980s New British Sculpture movement.

A sculptor, writer and educator, Allington came to prominence following the group exhibitions Objects and Sculpture (198l) and The Sculpture Show (1983). Like many of his contemporaries – Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Shirazeh Houshiary, Richard Wentworth, and Bill Woodrow to name a few – Allington was working in response to the belief that minimal and conceptual practices were losing their charge.

Allington was fascinated by the presence of classical forms in everyday life; be they restored fragments displayed in museums, reconstructions of Classical Greek sites, or kitsch reproductions of antiquity. Ideal Standard Forms, 1980 (Tate), speaks to this key concern with the artificial construction of culture. Arranged on the floor in a roughly square format, nine geometric objects – including a sphere, a cone, a cube, an ellipsoid – reveal Allington’s enduring interest in questions around authenticity and imitation. Hand-made in plaster, the sculptures are universal, ideal forms; yet they are inevitably imperfect manifestations that combine the effort of idealisation with the language of mass production.

The title of the exhibition, Things Unsaid, is taken directly from a drawing by the artist, reminding us that we often know more than can be spoken. Moreover, it encapsulates Allington’s feelings on the relationship between sense, perception, and objects that we physically experience and touch.

He taught at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, from (1990-2017), becoming its Head of Graduate Sculpture in 2000 and Professor of Sculpture in 2006. In 2015 he was awarded an AHRC Network Grant for his project Modern Japanese Sculpture, a collaborative research network with the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, and Musashino Arts University, Tokyo.

Allington’s work is represented in major collections, including The Arts Council Collection, Tate, Leeds Museums and Galleries, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Museum; he was also commissioned to create notable public sculpture in the UK, Germany and France. Things Unsaid presents a selection of archival material relating to the artist’s writings, sculptural process and works conceived beyond the gallery.

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Edward Allington

Ideal Standard Forms,  c. 1980

Artwork Caption Ideal Standard Forms,  c.  1981

Fruit of Oblivion,  c. 1982

Artwork Caption From the Birth of Paradise,  c. 1983

First Snail: From the Thousand Eared Night,  c. 1983

With Poisonous Libation,  c. 1983

The Golden Pavilion/As Seen From the Front,  c. 1984

Ideal Standard Forms (Ornamental Version),  We Are Time (2 works),  c. 1985

Two works from the Artemis of Ephesus series,  c. 1985-86

Caritas Romana,  c. 1986

Architectural Fragment, Third column,  c. 1986

The Lady of Indolence,  c. 1986

The Source,  c. 1986

Metropolitan Egypt from the East of London,  c. 1987

Myron's discobolos diminished (in 3 parts),  c. 1987

Seated in Darkness.  c. 1987

Unsupported Support,  c. 1987

Woman from the Greek, in America,  c. 1987

Woman from the Greek, in America,  c. 1987

Horn and sickle,  c. 1987

Horn and sickle,  c. 1987

Incomplete instrument,  c. 1989

From the Sex of Metals II,  c. 1989

Curved Pediment,  c. 1990

Device for Measuring Angels,  c. 1993

Untitled,  c. 1993

Sculpture et Gravure IV,  c. 1995

Tilted Vase (maquette),  c. 2005

Tilted Vase,  c. 2005

Tilted Vase,  c. 2005

Purfleet Timeline (Million Years),  c. 2009